What's new in Classroom

We add new features to Classroom frequently. This page provides a description of each new feature and a link to more information on using it in Classroom. Check this page each month to see what we've added.

March 2018

Rename a class—On iOS, teachers can change the class name and section.

Email a single view of a student’s work—Teachers can now email a list of all work by a student in a class to the student and their guardian. The list shows the status of the student’s work—assigned, turned in, and grades when work is graded.

See a single view of a student’s work—Teachers can now get a list of all work by a student in a class. Students can see a list of all their work for a class in one place. Teachers and students can filter the list by assignment status or grade.

Guardian summaries: Teachers and administrators can invite guardians to sign up for email summaries to keep up with their students. Guardians can choose how often to get a summary—daily or weekly—and can unsubscribe at any time. Summaries include a student’s missing or upcoming work as well as new announcements and questions posted by teachers in the class stream.

Topics for stream organization: Teachers can organize the class stream by adding topics to posts. Teachers and students can filter the stream by topic.

Teachers and students can preview materials attached to assignments or posts.

Teachers and students can view email notifications by class using Inbox by Gmail. Important updates from recent emails are highlighted in each bundle.

Google Forms: Teachers can easily attach Google Forms to posts and open responses from Classroom. When teachers attach a form to an assignment and there is no other work, the assignment is automatically marked as done when students complete the form.

Google Calendar: Each class has a calendar, and work with a due date is automatically added to the calendar. Teachers and students can view the calendar in Classroom, or in Google Calendar on their computers and mobile devices.

Share to Classroom with Chrome: Students and teachers can use the Share to Classroom Chrome extension to share web content to to their classes. Teachers can use the extension to instantly push web pages to all students in a class, or create an assignment or announcement in Classroom.

Ask and answer a question: Teachers can post a short answer question to students in the class stream at any time, with options to allow students to edit their own answer, and to see and reply to classmates’ answers. Students answer the question in the class stream, and teachers have the option to grade answers.

Reuse a post: Teachers can reuse existing posts (announcements, assignments, questions) from a current or previous class.

Visual refresh: Classroom has a new simplified design for creating and posting assignments, announcements, and questions and for viewing assignment details. The design updates enable quick and easy access for teachers and students.

Whitelisted domains: Now you can whitelist other G Suite for Education domains so students, teachers or staff in different domains can effectively work together in Drive and Classroom.

Mobile notifications: Students can see immediately when a teacher creates a new assignment or announcement, comments on a student’s post, or grades or returns an assignment. Teachers can see immediately when a student comments on a post or sends the teacher a private note and when the teacher is invited to teach a class.

Classroom share button: Teachers and students can share links, videos, and images from other websites or products to Classroom.

Classroom API: Allows administrators to provision and manage classes at scale, and lets developers integrate their applications with Classroom.

Set Classroom data access: Administrators can decide if users in a domain can grant access to their Classroom data to other applications.

Mobile notifications: In the next few weeks, mobile notifications for iOS and Android apps will allow students to immediately see when they get a new assignment or grade or a comment from another student or teacher.

Mobile app for Android and iOS: The Classroom mobile app allows students to do their work anytime and anywhere. It is designed for schools with iPads or Android tablets, schools with BYOD policies, and students' personal devices. Here are a few of the mobile-specific features available through the app:

Photos: Students can attach photos to assignments or posts, sharing them with the teacher or the whole class.

Share from other apps: Students can also easily attach images, PDFs and web pages from other apps to their assignments.

Offline: With offline caching students will be able to access their to do list even when they don’t have an internet connection.

Archive a class: At the end of the school year or a semester, you may want to archive a class to preserve the class materials, any assignments, and any postings to the class stream.

Assignments page for Teachers: On the Assignments page, teachers can review student work for any assignments as well as any grades or previous comments.

Teachers are editors: Teachers are added as editors to Drive files attached to student assignments, so they can see revision history and provide feedback before assignments are turned-in and after they’re returned.

Mark assignments as “done”: Not all assignments require students to submit work online — like reading a chapter or conducting an experiment — so students can simply mark assignments as "done" if there's nothing to turn in.

Stream controls for teachers: Teachers can set permissions for whether or not their class can post or comment in the stream, mute individual students from posting or commenting, and view previously deleted items in the stream.

Export all grades: Teachers can download grades for all assignments for a class at once, making it easier to export assignments to a gradebook.

Classroom launch: Classroom is designed to help teachers create and collect assignments paperlessly, including time-saving features like the ability to automatically make a copy of a Google document for each student.